Oak Grove’s McCarty debuts Hattiesburg American blog

By now, we all know Oak Grove rising senior Kirk McCarty, the athlete. You know, the left-handed pitcher who has verbally committed to play for Southern Miss, and helped lead his prep baseball team to a Class 6A State Championship in 2012. The same southpaw who’s also the starting quarterback for the Warriors. The first-team All-Area football selection, who shared All-Area Baseball Player of the Year honors with teammate Taylor Braley.

Yeah, that guy. Everybody knows him.

But what about Kirk McCarty, the writer? Anybody know that guy? Some might. He’s the sports editor for Oak Grove’s student newspaper, the Warrior Beat.

But this summer, McCarty is takin’ it up a notch. Kirk, who is playing for a travel baseball team this summer, will maintain a regular blog for the Hattiesburg American over the next couple of months.

He’ll write about whatever’s on his mind, which should prove entertaining. Dude is sharp.

The plan is to get Kirk set up with his own personal blog space on this website, however, we’ve hit a glitch or two trying to get there. It won’t be long, but in the interest of getting Kirk off and running, he’s already written his first blog, and I’m going to post it here (below).

The name of Kirk’s blog is, and will be, “Here’s The Pitch.”

Enjoy.

Thursday (Day One):
What was supposed to be a seven-hour bus ride has quickly turned into a snail’s-paced marathon. With constant detours and bumper-to-bumper traffic on Interstate 40, I knew we were in for an even longer trip.

The morning started with a 30-minute ride to the Flying J in Olive Branch, where the bus picked up Tanner Lloyd and Jonathan Lindsey from Lewisburg, Timothy Rowe from Hernando, and Taylor Braley and I. Taylor and I had hitched a ride to Tanner’s house from a practice in Starkville earlier.

It didn’t take long before the bus games started. Before we even left the parking lot, we had already started the “Green Grass Valley” riddle, then went on to the “Hat Game” and finally to “Black Magic” (Google them if you’re curious).

By the end of three hours spent playing these pointless games, the guys finally got past the awkward stage of a thrown-together baseball team. It didn’t take too long, and I think that really says a lot of the guys on this team representing Mississippi this week.
After hitting stand-still traffic and the fourth hour setting in on everybody, the headphones and pillows started making their appearances. I finally sat down in one seat for the first time on the trip and proceeded to listen to a little T-Pain radio on Pandora, despite my teammates’ dislike for the station.

I turned my attention to the TV where the MLB Draft preview was on. Watching this got me thinking about how a lot of guys on this bus have a pretty good opportunity to hear their name called on this day in the next few years. Guys like Desoto Central’s junior-to-be Austin Riley, who blew everyone away with his bullpen at practice the day before. And Belmont’s Luke Alexander, who has hit like 10 home runs a year for his varsity team since he was in second grade.

And that’s just two of the guys on this team. I have a feeling we would make for a pretty good high school team if we could all relocate to the same school.

Our first stop of the trip was at Cracker Barrel in Little Rock, Ark. We pulled in at 1 p.m. sharp, and got back on the road around 2. After fueling up on some turkey and dressing and grabbing a jawbreaker for the road, I was ready to take on the next four hours. We turned on a movie – a baseball movie, of course – and hunkered down for the home stretch.

We made it to Oklahoma around 6:15 p.m., just in time for our opening banquet where we met our host families. I planned out beforehand to room with Tanner Lloyd with the family who hosted him last year on the trip. For the past two weeks all I’ve heard from him is how great they are, and from first impressions, he wasn’t kidding.

We met the family and they are great. We have an awesome 13-year-old “host brother” named Brandon, who also shares a love for baseball, as well as football and basketball. And a wonderful host mom, Mary Jo, who treated us to some phenomenal “homemade” corndogs before we ended the night with some PS3 action.

After a long day, the whole team is excited to finally be here to represent Mississippi in an awesome tournament. And it’s a great opportunity to compete against some of the best talent in the country. Until next time, there’s the pitch.

Preview:
For readers wanting to know more about the baseball side of the team here’s a little preview for you. We are absolutely LOADED with left-handed pitching. We have seven, yes seven, left-handed pitchers, all with great stuff. Justin Steele, Jonathan Lindsey, Timothy Rowe, Jake Mangum, Drew Crosby, Logan Robbins, and myself.

We also some some pretty stout arms from the right side in Taylor Braley, Tanner Lloyd, Trace Lee, and Austin Riley. So we’re set on pitching and from what I have seen so far, we don’t swing the bats too bad either.

I’ve never seen any of the teams that are here from other states, but I really think we have a shot to be playing for the championship game next Wednesday (June 12). From what I hear, we would most likely be facing Tennessee. But, it’s baseball – anything can happen.

The tournament is a round-robin format. We play everybody once and the teams with the top two records play for the championship while the others match up for consolation games. Ten games in six days? Should be fun.

We begin our journey Friday against Colorado at 2 p.m., with another game against Oklahoma Gold at 7:45.